The Adventures Of Captain Marvel

With One Magic Word

The Adventures Of Captain Marvel
USA 1941 Republic Pictures
Directed by John English and William Witney
DVD Region 1

I’ve absolutely loved the old theatrical serials put out in cinemas in the 1930s to 1950s (and even some of the silent ones made before this period), ever since the BBC first aired a two part omnibus edition of the 1936 Flash Gordon serial on TV back in the early to mid-1970s. That and other serials the BBC acquired for airing back in the 1970s and 1980s were always highlights of my childhood and teenage years and I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to get around to finally reviewing one of my beloved serials on this blog. Which means it’s been a while since I watched one, I guess. Time to start remedying that.

The Adventures of Captain Marvel was, in 1941, the very first serial made from a superhero comic book (various other costumed adventurers such as Superman, Batman and Captain America were not far behind). Based on Captain Marvel appearing in Whiz Comics and other titles by Fawcett Comics, this superhero even used to outsell Superman comics back then. He’s always been pretty much my favourite of the comic book super-powered heroes because he was always written with a lighter touch and the artwork, while simplistic in some ways, was very clear cut and much more striking than that found in many of his contemporaries.

After a lawsuit from DC Comics in the 70s, Fawcett lost in that they were seen to be copying Superman (no, the origins and plot mechanisms and style are totally different) but then DC took over the character themselves and it’s these comics from the early 1970s that got me hooked on The World’s Mightiest Mortal, as he used to be known (although I have read some of the first year or so of the original Fawcett versions in the first two volumes of archive editions that DC put out). However, because of the copyright situation, during this time the comic book company Marvel comics were able to gain control of the name Captain Marvel and promptly used it for their own super-powered hero (one of the spin off characters with her own title was Ms. Marvel who, confusingly, is getting her own film in 2019 called Captain Marvel). So the 1970s edition of the DC comic was called SHAZAM! (often proceeded by the phrase “With one magic word” on the title). This was Cap’s word which changed him in a lightning flash from boy reporter Billy Batson to Captain Marvel, a power bestowed on him in a New York subway by the ancient wizard Shazam, who died at the same time but who became a spirit to help guide and pass over his legacy to Billy (a bit like a force ghost in the Star Wars movies, in some ways).

He was still called Captain Marvel, though, until DC totally screwed everything up at some point in the last ten years and dropped the name completely, calling him by the name Shazam instead. Which is completely backwards and crazy and, well, when was the last time you had a superhero who couldn’t say his own name because it would change him back to his alter ego. Another stupid thing they tried around 20 or so years ago was to have Billy Batson’s personality in the body of Captain Marvel when he changed... up until then they’d always been distinctly different personality types. This allowed room for more ‘fish out of water’ comedy but at the expense, in my view, of one of the unique aspects of this character. Alas, I believe it’s that version of the character they are using in the upcoming 2019 Shazam movie and, frankly, I’m not expecting good things from that. There was also a TV show in America in the 1970s but I don’t think we got it in the UK (or at any rate I’ve never seen it).

However, we do still at least have this serial, which is often cited as the greatest serial ever made. Far from it as far as I’m concerned - certainly as an adaptation and compared to some of the Universal and Columbia serials, I think it tends to pale in comparison. That being said, it’s definitely one of the more competently made and entertaining serials I’ve seen and it’s always a joy to watch.

This one stars Frank Coghlan Jr. as Billy Batson, no longer a news person and working as part of a team of middle aged archaeologists on a dig in Egypt (yeah, you can bet the curse of King Tut’s tomb is referenced in the first episode). Aiding Billy in the ‘running around and doing stuff’ department are actress Betty Wallace and ex-Bowery Boy William 'Billy' Benedict, although Benedict doesn’t have an awful lot to do, it has to be said. Instead of a New York subway... once an ancient tomb is discovered and the main find, an ancient Egyptian laser weapon in the shape of a scorpion which needs six special lenses to operate it, is divided into lenses between the group so nobody can gain possession of it... Billy comes across Ancient Wizard Shazam in the tomb who, there, grants him the power of Captain Marvel. When Billy shout’s the Wizards name (like the comic, the name Shazam is an acronym embodying the powers of Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury) he transforms into Captain Marvel in order to protect the weapon of the scorpion from falling into the wrong hands... in a strange twist known only to the makers of the serial, I would guess, once Captain Marvel’s job is done at the end of Chapter 12 - Captain Marvel’s Secret, those powers are taken away from him.

Tom Tyler plays Captain Marvel and, although the character is certainly not as comedic as the original print version, the look of whom was based on film star Fred MacMurray, he does play a straight superhero role fairly well. He made a lot of Westerns in his time and, if memory serves, owned his own ranch in later years from which he would supply horses to the studios for their pictures. Again, in later years, he was accidentally run over by infamous director Edward D. Wood Jr who picked him up and gave him a lift home afterwards. The year prior to Captain Marvel he had, among a load of other roles, played the first incarnation of Kharis The Mummy in the Universal sequel, The Mummy’s Hand (Lon Chaney Jr took over the role in the next three movies in the series) and two years after this he would go on to play another iconic comic book hero in a theatrical serial adaptation of The Phantom (which is also worth a watch).

And all in all this is not a bad serial... just not a great one. Some great, for their time, special effects such as flying and a wonderful cave melting sequence were obviously done by the same effects guys who did the later Republic serial King Of The Rocketmen, which I just loved. As usual the episodes are mostly short, 15 minute affairs (the first episode on these things is usually almost twice that length) and consists of the main characters running around from one location to another and getting into fights, chases and cliffhanger endings.

A lot of the cliffhangers in this one, early on in the serial, consist of the audience finding out about the limits of Captain Marvel’s super powers... so, for instance, an electrically charged guillotine will drop on a curiously unconscious Captain Marvel at the end of one episode and then be shown to be breaking on his head at the opening of the next. It’s not long, however, before the endings are using cheats where additional footage not seen the week before is added in to fool an audience who can’t quite remember what last week’s ending showed and this enables the writers to get the heroes out of what was seen to be an absolutely impossible situation. I used to get really mad at that stuff when I was a kid but, as the years go by, I just find it kinda quaint and enjoy seeing how audaciously the studio can attempt to cheat each ending when it has a mind to.

Other charming features of this serial are things like the little, leap of faith continuity errors which make no sense when you watch them... such as when Captain Marvel enters a bungalow and, when he leaves via the window, is seen leaping from a multi-storey building. And, of course, there are those wonderful Republic fight scenes. You could usually tell which company had made a particlar serial due to little quirks such as, for example, the style of the back story recap at the start of the episodes. One of the things which really shows up that a serial had been put out by Republic Pictures is the quality of their fist fights. Basically, if you’re watching a serial by this studio, you know the fights are going to be enthusiastic, energetic to the point where they almost look like the film has been sped up and... this is the thing... everything breakable in the room gets used and broken in the fight. Seriously, if there’s a prop or item of furniture that isn’t screwed down then it’s definitely going to be used to hit someone with. No Republic fight that I remember has any furniture or unbroken props left in a room once the performers are done with it. This is the main thing I look out for when watching a Republic serial although, by and large, I tend to find the script and pacing of the Universal serials (not to mention the bigger budgets) a lot more watchable.

This serial is one of those types where the good guys have to identify, over the course of the chapter play, which one of their party of friendlies is really the evil villain in disguise and, I have to say, they’re usually tough to spot in these things. Absolutely everyone is made to look like the villain at some point and, just like an Italian giallo of the 1970s, that usually happens just before they get killed off. There’s even one point in this where the whole party are caught in a deathtrap by The Scorpion and you realise, since there are only a few suspects left standing by this point in the proceedings, that said villain has also managed to capture himself in his own deathtrap too, with no hope of escape. Why the heck would he spring it then is anybody’s guess.

The curious thing about this serial is that, by the end of the last episode, only the three young characters of Billy and his friends have survived the story. So why they all walk away looking triumphant when all their eminent friends and colleagues have died is a bit puzzling to say the least.

Still, at the end of the day, The Adventures Of Captain Marvel is a decent enough serial and it’s not a bad one to start on if you’ve never seen any of these things before (although personally I would start on Flash Gordon as a good thing to hook oneself with). It’s fast, fun and a little bit creaky but, frankly, I can’t imagine the new Shazam movie next year being any better than this one. In fact, I’m guessing it might well be a good palette cleanser once you’ve seen the new one... even with the drastic changes to the characters, I’m assuming it’s still more faithful to the original character than his latest incarnation. So maybe give it a go if you’ve been looking for an excuse to get into these wonderful cinema serials of yesteryear... there's something about them which seperate them out from a lot of other cinematic creations.

Bumblebee

Bumble Door

Bumblebee
2018 USA
Directed by Travis Knight
UK cinema release print.

Wow... it’s getting really dangerous to see an actual movie at the cinema in the UK again.

I thought the days of Draconian censorship were behind us but, no, first Aquaman (reviewed here) and now Bumblebee have both been pre-cut for the UK market to achieve lower ratings on the advice of the BBFC. So let’s be clear about this... if you go to see Bumblebee at a UK (or Australian, apparently) cinema then you are not actually seeing the film, just a highlights only version because, yep, they cut a full 6 seconds out of this thing. Personally I find one frame of film cut to be appalling vandalism but they’ve cut a whopping 144 frames out of this? Between them the BBFC and the studios should be hanging their heads in shame and refunding our money for making us watch things pretending to be films when they’re not the full version. I don’t think this is acceptable behaviour and I find it damned offensive. I won’t say anything more about it in this review but my hands are tensing up right now from writing about these crimes against filmanity because I’m so enraged. It’s not the only thing which enraged me about the movie.

So, okay... let’s go with the big main positive about this film and say that this prequel is the best follow up to the original Transformers we’ve had. It’s not nearly as good as the very first one but it’s way beyond the follow ups which, to be fair, is not saying too much because Transformers 2 - 5 were all, basically, absolute rubbish which I couldn’t believe were coming from the same creative team as the first one.

Although Michael Bay has stayed on with this one as producer, it’s a bit of a sea change here and the writers and directors have gone for a little change of pace. Sure there’s plenty of action in this one but there’s also lots of small stuff about the way the characters relate to each other and grow... in other words, there’s a lot of heart to this one. Something all the other sequels forgot to throw into the mix while they were similarly busy not allowing themselves to slow down from anaesthetising the audience with non-stop action and forgetting that contrasting action with some less kinetic content is what allows the action sequences to have an actual impact in the first place. This one... more or less... gets the mix between the two right and the result is we have a fairly well balanced film.

That being said, I was almost frothing at the mouth within the first five or ten minutes of what was left of this film after the censors were done with it... so enraged I wanted to yell at the screen and walk out.

Why? Well a complete lack of story logic continuity in the opening sequence which completely kills it.

The film starts off on Cybertron with the Decepticons winning the war against the Autobots (lead by Optimus Prime) and we see Bumblebee escaping to earth to await the coming of the other Transformers. All well and good but when we see Bumblebee on Cybertron he is already in the form of a car. Wait, what? It’s well documented in the Transformers movie universe that the various robots need to scan something before they are able to turn into it... and that’s further backed up in numerous scenes in this movie too. Since a car which is built to carry human passengers would be a completely alien concept to the Transformers at this point, then there’s no way any of the Autobots would be able to change into one. Not unless they’d already been to Earth. Oh, I thought to myself, that means we’ll be finding out that Bumblebee has already visited Earth in his past but... no... a minute or two later Optimus Prime tells him he’s located a planet called Earth they can all go to hide on. So... yeah... it makes absolutely no bloody sense that the first time you see the title character he’s in the shape of an Earth made car when he hasn’t even seen a car or knows what it looks like. This is untenable, people and sloppy writers should really be taken to account for bizarrely poor slip ups like this. Especially since it’s going to pop the average viewer right out of the movie while s/he tries to figure out just what the heck kind of story logic is being followed here. Or in this case... unfollowed.

Okay, now that’s out of my system, when Bumblebee gets to Earth things become more like the early, non-action sequences of the original Transformers, with the friendly autobot stumbling around, breaking things and accidentally bumbling his way through doors etc while covertly befriending the main lead Charlie, played by Hailee Steinfeld who I’d just seen... alright, heard... in another film at the cinema as Gwen Stacey in Spider-Man - Into The Spider-Verse (reviewed here) and also her love interest Memo (played by Jorge Lendeborg Jr, who was so brilliant in Brigsby Bear last year... reviewed here). Meanwhile they have to deal with the military from Sector Seven (from the previous films) plus a couple of Decepticons who have misled the military into helping them locate Bumblebee.

And you know what...?

Considering how angry I was at the start of the film, the rest of the story is so well written and performed that I even had tears in my eyes during one of the more moving sequences. Actually, being a prequel, this fits in pretty well with the previous films... apart from that annoying start with the car thing. It’s also really well acted and feels much more like an overall coherent story, rather than just a basic frame to hang set pieces on. Some of the action sequences felt a bit ‘samey’ and dull but at least they were well paced and you still felt like there was a reason to be having them... which I guess is at least half the battle with films like this.

Dario Marinelli’s score is nicely serviceable but it didn’t really seem to share any of the big themes created by Steve Jablonsky for the other ones. At least as far as I could tell because, during a lot of the action scenes, the noise was turned up way too much over the score for it to be effectively heard anyway. It sounded appropriate to the subject matter of the film, though, so that’s something.

Other than that... if you’re a follower of the Transformers movies and have been waiting for something which comes at least even a little close to capturing the lightning in a bottle of the first live action movie then Bumblebee is definitely the one to go see. It’s fairly heart warming and the director certainly has a good go at it. Kids would probably like this one too... even though it seems to be targeting itself at people who were of a certain age in the 1980s when The Breakfast Club was one of the main ‘go to’ movies for a certain generation. Don’t you forget about... this one.

Merry Christmas 2018

Merry Christmas
to all my readers!

It's that time of year again where I traditionally rattle on about what I've got coming on the blog over the next 12 months. Except... I looked at the last four year's worth of December 25th posts and I realised I never quite seem to get around... or more accurately... claw back enough time, to watch the things I want to watch. Or there are scheduling issues.

For instance, about four years ago I was saying I wanted to finish off my reviews of the old cinema series of The Saint movies. Well, mission accomplished, I finished them quite a few months ago... except, there's been so much other stuff which has taken priority that I still have two or three of them to actually make it onto the blog. So I do have things waiting in the wings, as it were but... new cinema releases or reviews of things which are currently a 'hot' topic tend to take priority. So there's some stuff I have to pull out, put the finishing touches to and then get up on the blog... I just haven't had time yet.

But I will so I can definitely say there's the concluding sets of reviews of the Pirates Of The Caribbean, Phantasm and, yes, The Saint movies to come over the next few months... as well as some other, rather interesting books and movies. Time permitting.

Of course, we have another promising movie year for 2019 with stuff like Avengers - Endgame and Godzilla - King Of The Monsters hitting cinemas so, yeah, I'll do my best to get all these things up. Since there's no proper Doctor Who Christmas Special this year, maybe I'll run some of them this week. Although my review of another high profile Hollywood movie should be going up some time on Boxing Day, I reckon.

And there's not much more to say here. Hope you all have some fun and if you find yourself with some downtime this year, have a go at my Annual Cryptic Movie Quiz which you can find just here.

Once again, thank you for being here and reading my teeny tiny little corner of cyberspace. I truly appreciate your taking the time to look me up. All the best to you.

NUTS4R2.

Spider-Man - Into The Spider-Verse

Morales Dilemma

Spider-Man - Into The Spider-Verse
2018 USA
Directed by Bob Persichetti,
Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman
UK cinema release print.

After a sequence from this movie played by way of a second post-credits scene in Venom (reviewed here) I was really not that into bothering to go see Spider-Man - Into The Spider-Verse at my local cinema. After all, this film looked from the trailers like it was going to be focusing on the Miles Morales version of the character, with Peter Parker as a secondary character and, I have to say that, for the most part (with a few minor exceptions) I have pretty much only ever read the first ten years or so of Spider-Man’s comic book adventures, starting from his first appearance in an issue of Amazing Fantasy (which is nicely parodied as an alternatively titled comic book in the version of reality in which this movie is set). So I have absolutely no idea who Miles Morales is.

Two things changed my mind. One being that the score for this one has been composed by one of my favourite ‘new’ composers Daniel Pemberton and, frankly, I expect what he does to be exceptional (this movie score is certainly that).

The other reason I finally decided to give this one a go is that the film has been getting some exceptional word of mouth on Twitter, with some people citing it as their favourite movie of the year... and I didn’t want to get left out. So I went and saw the thing and... yeah... I didn’t regret it.

This film manages to do a lot of cool things and get most of everything it juggles just about right. It has many separate different versions of Spider-Man from multiple dimensions that have crossed over... including two versions of Peter Parker (one of them played by Chris Pine), Spider-Gwen (the spider powered version of Gwen Stacy), Spider-Man Noir (a black and white one from the 1930s, played here by Nicolas Cage), a strange manga/anime based looking version called SP//dr (consisting of a girl, a robot and a spider) and everyone’s favourite Spider-Pig, Peter Porker - The Spectacular Spider-Ham... there’s even a Spider-Man 2099 cameo too but... yeah, I won’t say too much about that. And, of course, Miles Morales, whose story we follow in a little more detail than the others although we get some incredible back story flashbacks for all the other characters by way of a running gag which, frankly, really works well.

As you can tell from the diverse character cast consisting of different tonal styles, the film is trying to juggle a lot of balls in the air as it switches from moving drama to broad humour and all the things in between at a fair pace. The amazing thing, though... perhaps even more amazing than The Amazing Spider-Man... is that it manages to tell a story of a team of Spider-Heroes working together in all these different styles while being as post-modern as can be and with a fairly quirky, bordering on very surreal, animation style and it doesn’t at any point lose you and, frankly, it all meshes together very well. Which seems to me to be very against the odds.

It’s fast, it’s colourful and there are some really great compositions as several source references often fight for space in the frame... this is an incredibly detailed movie and I know I’ll notice a lot more when I catch up to this one again. There’s quite a lot of the syntax of comics throughout history used, all colliding with different styles and a wonderful use of typography all clamouring for attention. In fact, even the blink and you’ll miss it typography hits have some nice jokes in certain parts which reference each other. There’s also some visual references to off-set litho print being off-register in a few cases (if I’m reading the intention of the filmmakers correctly... at first I thought there was something going wrong with the projection).

Another really great thing in this is that the non-stop cleverness never lets up and is with you right from the start. Since the nature of the film is about several universes colliding and constantly going out of phase in terms of the characters when they’re in Miles’ version of the universe, even the Columbia Pictures logo and the Marvel logo at the start of the picture are doing some dazzling things (including a nice little shout out to Cat Ballou, of all things). The logos are even followed by a nice big ‘Approved By The Comics Code Authority’ stamp... which should have a lot of people my age tripping down memory lane (are those things still on modern comics?

As you would expect, there are lots of metatextual references to various things in the Spider-Man comics and also, from very early on, quite a few references to the various Spider-Man movies over the years... but there’s also a lot of little jokes about other things making their way in there too (I loved the Shaun Of The Dead parody poster they kept flashing up in the background) and, of course, the usual nice cameo from the now departed Stan Lee (I believe it was the last ‘voice performance’ he recorded... which I suspect means we’re far from done with the cameos in the live action movies at the moment).

And, yeah, the glue which makes all this possible in terms of keeping it all together as one coherent experience, as far as I’m concerned anyway, is Daniel Pemberton’s wonderful score, which should be swinging it’s way on a shiny disc to my letterbox in a week or so, fingers crossed. I can’t wait to hear this thing as a stand alone listen.

So, all in all, glad I went to see Spider-Man - Into The Spider-Verse (the film with too many hyphens) to find out what all the fuss was about. One last thing before you rush to your nearest cinema, though. If you’re a fan of the old 1960s Spider-Man cartoon show, not to mention internet memes, then you’ll really want to wait until the end credits are over because... well, just watch it. You’ll see what I mean.

NUTS4R2's Cryptic Movie Quiz - Christmas 2018

Annual Cryptic Movie Quiz

Merry Christmas everybody.

Once again it’s time for my Cryptic Movie Quiz for the festive period.

If you look at the grid above you’ll see spaces for 14 movie titles running horizontally and, below this intro, are the cryptic clues to help you work out what these non-Christmas movie titles are. To help you out, I’ve filled in a line of letters diagonally downwards spelling out MERRY CHRISTMAS... so you have a letter in its correct position for each of the titles. Please don’t forget to click on the grid to see a larger version of it and maybe print it off to help you.

As usual, depending on my finances after Christmas... I’ll probably award a small, strange or possibly customised prize (customised if I know you from Twitter) to the person with the most correct answers, pulled from a hat in the unlikely event of a draw (that's never happened yet).

Email your answers to me at nuts4r2@hotmail.com and, since I posted this a little later this year, you have until the end of January 6th 2019 to get your entries in. A few days after that, I’ll stick up the name of the winner (or winners, if it’s a tie or a group effort), along with all the answers, here on my blog.

By way of an example, here’s a question from last year’s quiz, followed by the answer...

Example question:
Saw her feller.

Example answer:
Another way of saying 'saw her feller' might be... spied her man. So... SPIDERMAN was the answer to the clue.

If you keep checking back at the comments section below, I will probably put the odd extra clue down there every now and again to help you out through the Christmas period.

Full marks are rarely scored so... if you’re feeling a bit stuck, there’s still everything to play for. Send me what you've got anyway.

I hope you enjoy playing and, above all, have fun this Christmas, drink responsibly and play irresponsibly. And here are the questions...

1. How old is this special elevation in the road to lift your vehicle off the ground?

2. Tie someone up and then recite the letters of their current state in the right order.

3. They sliced and scrambled Reg up and added something to stop him being odd.

4. I go with the French green.

5. The fourth guy along in the alphabet.

6. You just make your way up to the top of that chopping instrument.

7. Like if a distorted, reduced version of a Woody Allen title character came from a continent bounded by Europe and the Arctic, Pacific, and Indian oceans.

8. Observing a nasty shade of angry and then getting into an argument at the place which is conducive to your good health.

9. Presumably this is where the alphabet lives.

10. Raise an unrelated child on the last day of the working week.

11. Backslang for an Emu to a ‘t’.

12. The final thing needed to hold up the 13th letter of the alphabet.

13. A terrible, common serifed font is where it’s at when James, The Black Dahlia writer, drinks a malt beverage containing about 6 percent alcohol by volume.

14. After the sixth we have a pinnipedia.

Again... good luck and best wishes to you for the season.

Crimson Snow

Snowdunnit!

Crimson Snow - Winter Mysteries 
Edited by Martin Edwards
The British Library Press
ISBN: 978-0712356657
So this is my fourth year of reading a book in December which has a Christmas setting and then reviewing it on here and... I have to say that if I didn’t know better it would not be unreasonable for me to conclude, after the previous two years, that I just don’t like short stories. The first year I tried what is now becoming something of a tradition, I read the novel Mystery In White (you can read that review here) and I really enjoyed it. Alas, when I followed it up the next two years with Christmas short horror story collections, I was less than impressed. So this year I’ve tried a selection of mystery stories and I have to say that, for the most part, I am somewhat less than enthusiastic about a great deal of the fiction I was reading in this tome.

However, before I hastily concur that the short story format is not for me.... let me add that I love the short stories of such writers as Philip K. Dick, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Edgar Allan Poe. So maybe, I might resign myself to the fact that I don’t like collections of stories by a variety of writers where, to be fair, the hit and miss nature of that proposition might be a deciding factor in whether it’s something I can get behind or not. However, I am then reminded that I loved the selection of Christmas stories from The New Yorker magazine which they published a decade or so ago and, every year, I enjoy at least one Tales Of The Shadowmen collection (I really must get around to reviewing one of those sometime soon) and so, perhaps, I should be a little less hard on myself when it comes to my overall reaction to these things and just chalk it up to experience, once more.

The collection known as Crimson Snow and subtitled Winter Mysteries is a case in point where once again I feel victim to the hit and miss nature of the volume in which I have decided to spend time with on the run up to the Christmas festivities.

In the introduction to the collection he has put together here, Mr. Edwards highlights the benefits of curling up with a book over the Christmas period, rather than spending all one's time with online shopping or parties of a varied nature and, I have to say, this is a matter in which I am in whole hearted agreement with... or would be once the online shopping is done. Alas, if it had been a different curling companion other than this particular volume I chose, I might have had a more beneficial experience here than what I ended up with.

I’d have to say that while the majority of stories in this collection are fairly well written, they were certainly less than entertaining and, in a fair few cases, easy mysteries to solve. The opening story, The Ghost’s Touch is something I’ve already forgotten the details of (and pretty much most of the broad strokes too, it has to be said) but I do remember it starts off trying to pass itself off as a traditional Christmas ghost story before, inevitably, heading into territory more familiar to those who would embark on an endeavour boldly subtitled Winter Mysteries. It has some nice foreshadowing... “Had I been absent, the catastrophe might have been greater...” but, overall I have to say that I was mostly ambivalent towards this short and it didn’t really give me anything I wasn’t expecting.

There were a few of these stories written by famous names such as Edgar Wallace which, I have to say, didn’t really take me by surprise when... spoiler alert... it turned out the narrator who was following the investigation of a murder turned out to be the guilty party. Another seasonal tale called The Man With The Sack, written by Margery Allingham and starring her famous detective Campion, was similarly disappointing.

As was a script for a Sherlock Homes spin off play by S.C. Roberts, which actually had me wondering what the writer was thinking attempting it and, furthermore, why it was included here. There are much better Sherlock Holmes parodies out in the world and this one didn’t really seem to add anything new into the mix.

Most of the volume is just small puzzle solving and nothing, at least for this reader, to get excited about. There were a couple of standouts but for every little real gem here there seems to be at least two stories worth of paste. One of the stories included is all about a woman getting pushed off a roof and, quite honestly, I couldn’t find one single reason as to why it had been included in a book which has such a clearly descriptive and functional title as this.

But there are a couple of stories here worth reading...

Mr. Cork’s Secret by McDonald Hastings is a fast moving murder caper set in a hotel over Christmas and, like the original printing of the magazine it first appeared in... an extra solution to the mystery is given as a last chapter at the end of the book which was originally published in another issue, along with the two pages by the competition winners who had guessed just what Mr. Cork’s secret was (it’s really not that hard, to be honest). The dialogue and atmosphere is straight out of a 1930s or 1940s detective movie and fairly sparkles on the page.

By far my favourite tale, however, was Death In December by Victor Gunn, which featured that author’s running police detective character, Ironsides Cromwell and which was culled from a collection of stories featuring the detective set during various holiday periods. This one has some nice stuff in it and, again, takes the guise of a Christmas ghost story before revealing the inevitable human hands behind the seemingly supernatural shenanigans. Nice stuff though and a shadowy figure chased by the detectives that leaves no footprints in the snow has a nice explanation for this phenomenon. Easily the most entertaining gem of the collection and also, I think, the longest.

There’s one or two other nice things in this selection too but even a story which relies on a poisoned napkin which the victim rubs over his lips at various points during a Christmas dinner kind of loses its sting when you’ve already figured out who the killer really was when he was introduced fairly early on in the story. And another tale where a detective tries to solve the presence of a mystery owner at a house is nice in the fact that it turns out the mystery element of the story is entirely in the policeman’s head and he’s just gotten the wrong end of the stick.

All in all though... yeah, I’m not that happy with my choice this year and so I need to maybe find a more substantial Christmas adventure which doesn’t comprise of just short stories for next December, methinks. As for Crimson Snow... there are some things to like in it and the editor writes a page of prologue to each story to explain who each writer is but... I would only recommend it for die hard mystery fans. Not my cup of tea.

Aquaman

Curry On Sea Men

Aquaman
2018 Australia/USA
Directed by James Wan
UK cinema release print.

Okay... so this was nothing like what I was expecting this movie to be. I was assuming this would be, like most of the other recent DC movies in this particular cinematic strand of continuity... something of a mess. As it is, this is easily one of the most engaging and entertaining of the DC universe films, second only to Wonder Woman (reviewed here). That being said, I can’t imagine any other superhero movie ever coming close to Wonder Woman in my lifetime so, yeah, I guess you can say I thought a lot of the new Aquaman movie, even though he really isn’t the Aquaman I used to love as a kid.

Aquaman stars Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry, the title character, reprising his role from Batman Vs Superman - Dawn Of Justice (reviewed here) and Justice League (reviewed here). He bookends the narrative with voice-over narrative telling a big story of political battles in the undersea kingdom which threaten all the non-ocean dwellers on the planet but, he comes at it through the eyes of his personal story and... this is something which hooked me in right from the start... he tells it from the angle of a love story. A love story between his dad, Tom, played by Temuera Morrison (who you might remember as Bobba Fett’s father Jango Fett, plus a bunch of clones of his character, in the prequel Star Wars movies) and his mother, Atlanna, played by Nicole Kidman.

And it’s quite charming and heart warming and from this simple, fish out of water start where Tom rescues Atlanna and cares for her in his lighthouse, I was completely hooked. There’s a wonderful action scene in said lighthouse where Nicole Kidman goes full-on warrior and bashes up a load of Atlanteans and then sacrifices her freedom to return to the oceans, leaving Tom to raise their child... who we soon see has lots of cool, undersea powers from his mother.

From then on we get two parts of the villainous plot introduced... as Black Manta, a modern pirate played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, is left hating Aquaman for reasons I won’t go into here while regular James Wan collaborator Patrick Wilson, as Aquaman’s half-brother King Orm, tries to persuade and manipulate wise King Nerreus, played by Dolph Lundgren, to raise up Atlantis, unite all the armies of the kingdoms of the oceans and wage war on the surface dwellers who have been polluting their oceans for centuries. Meanwhile, over the years, we have Orm’s advisor Vulko, played by Willem Dafoe, who has been secretly training Aquaman in his fishy ways over the years and Mera, played by Johnny Depp’s nemesis Amber Heard, reprising her role from Justice League, who wants Arthur Curry to find an ancient trident which will give him power to gain the kingship of the ocean and defeat Orm’s attempt to be Ocean Master.

So, basically, what we have is an action spectacular with a kind of road movie treasure hunt involving Aquaman and Mera, who are trying to gain the trident and avert disaster and... you know what? It’s a real fun ride.

James Wan is somebody I usually only associate with low budget, fairly high quality horror films but, it looks like he can really knock out a good, large scale action blockbuster if he’s given enough money to play with. Like Wonder Woman, the big action is matched by a very overt, emotional, beating heart which gives the audience something to invest in when the battle scenes come and this really took me by surprise since, frankly, the Aquaman character didn’t really get much of a chance to shine in Justice League. So the writers have really thought about this one and Wan has managed to pull it all together to make a very confident looking, big screen spectacle.

This is not the blond, short back and sides version of Aquaman I grew up with... reading him in his appearances in titles such as Justice League Of America and The Super Friends. I used to love the little Comic Action Heroes figure from Mego I had as a kid, despite the fact that my Uncle had squeezed it too hard one day and Aquaman’s leg would fall off whenever he went into action after that. So I was not very happy about the look of the character they’ve brought to the screen here but I really mellowed to it once I saw how well the film works. Also, there are a fair few throwbacks to those original Aquaman strips... including those little circles they used to draw to symbolise him talking to the creatures of the ocean and also, in the endgame of the picture, his old, colourful orange and ‘green gauntlets’ costume which I used to like so much.

Now, there are a couple of problems with the movie so let me just cover those here...

It’s been quoted many times over the years that ‘continuity is the hobgoblin of the small minded’. Well then call me small minded but I think story arc continuity is an important and much valued building block when fashioning a cinematic universe (or in any other kind of story medium, to be fair) and I got the feeling that if I were to sit down and re-watch Justice League right now, I’d find a couple of glaring mis-matches. However, there’s very little shout out to the former film, although it clearly takes place some time after that one and... they kind of get away with certain differences, I think.

The other problem is that it’s just too long... it kinda slumps about two thirds of the way through and the action scenes towards the end could have done with a fair amount of trimming it seems to me. Also, a more lengthy and personal fight between Orm and Aquaman may have been a little more satisfying. That being said, it didn’t detract form the sheer impact and brilliance of the film overall and I think this is definitely one of the DC films from this period which will be remembered in a positive light, providing audiences are willing to go and see it after the not so great Justice League.

But it also has a lot going for it... great acting, great story, some well choreographed action in the middle of the film and a beautiful score by Rupert Gregson-Williams, who also did such a great job on Wonder Woman. Also, it’s easily the most surreal of the contemporary DC movies, with characters riding armoured battle sharks, giant crabs and militarised crustacean people... it’s like if Salvador Dali was allowed to design the extended underwater battle from the James Bond film Thunderball (reviewed here) and did his own thing with it. Which is never going to be a bad thing.

Also, it’s got some amazing transition scenes in the movie including flashbacks which take you completely by surprise and a lovely transformation from a shot of a snow globe to the next narrative point in the story, fairly early on in the film. There’s some really nice stuff in here and I think James Wan has done a truly remarkable job cramming in all this great stuff in a compelling, visual way.

So yeah, that’s my take on Aquaman. There’s a mid post-credits scene which gives you some insight into where they might be going with a sequel and, if it does the numbers I’m hoping it does at the box office, then we should be seeing that at some point in the future (fingers crossed). If you’re, like me, wondering why the hell DC have been getting everything wrong lately other than Wonder Woman... well, wonder no more. If you decide to go and see Aquaman then you’re in for an aquatic treat. Thoroughly enjoyed this although, a quick ‘heads up’ to say that, since I saw this, I’ve found out it’s been cut under advice from the BBFC in this country... which means I’ll definitely be importing the Blu Ray from the US when it comes out, rather than buy the truncated, vandalised English version.

Wonder Woman The Golden Age Vol 1

Ropes N’ Tropes

Wonder Woman
The Golden Age Vol 1
by William Moulton Marston
DC Comics 
ISBN: 978-1401274443

I’ll be the first to admit that I was never much interested in Wonder Woman as a kid growing up in, mostly, the 1970s. Sure I watched the Lynda Carter TV show from time to time, primarily because there were so very few live action superhero characters on television then that it was a huge novelty to get someone doing this kind of stuff on air (and even less so in the UK where we only got a few of the small selection of live action comic book characters that the US were putting out in shows and movies). So my primary experiences of Wonder Woman were when she used to show up in the odd issue of the 1970s Justice League of America comics, which I might find laying around at my Uncle’s place and, of course, in one of my favourite cartoon shows, The Superfriends (which was kind of an animated Justice League lite). Of course, Lynda Carter would return to my fantasy life just a few years later in the Wonder Woman costume but... err... yeah, that was purely for other reasons and perhaps it would be inappropriate to explore that here.

All that changed last year when I saw what is, to date, the greatest superhero movie of all time, Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman (reviewed here), starring Gal Gadot as the titular character. This film both moved me and caught my eye on almost every level and, coupled with the unbelievably brilliant biopic Professor Marston And The Wonder Women (reviewed here), it was obvious I was going to want to read more about this beloved comic icon and, what better way than to read these new reprints of her earliest days.

Wonder Woman The Golden Age is a generous tome and reprints all of the stories appearing in the first year or so of her existence from late 1941 and into 1942, covering her first appearance in All Star Comics, followed by a continuation of that origin story in Sensation Comics, followed by her features continuing in Sensation Comics and also in the issues of her own Wonder Woman comic, once the character was proven to be successful.

The artwork is pretty much what I was expecting from a 1940s comic book although, that being said, the drawings aren’t quite as crude as the early Superman comics from 1938, nor the various Timely (later Marvel) comic characters from 1939 such as The Human Torch and The Sub Mariner. I think by the time Wonder Woman was launched onto the scene, the comic book artists were starting to get the hang of the idea that comics were a big thing and a regular paying job, so the artwork by various artists was probably improving all the time (that’s my theory, anyway) so, while you can probably easily date the artwork in these issues to more or less the correct time period (not to mention the structure of the pages as a whole), they aren’t in any way flat or boring and are easier on the eye than you might expect.

It’s interesting to note that while the origin of the character (as told in a couple of different versions in this first year) is quite a bit different from the version in the latest movie - presumably it’s been much revised over DC’s lengthy history - there are also a lot of elements from the original early issues that did make it into the recent film version. Whether that’s Jenkin’s and her writers cobbling bits of Wonder Woman history together herself from the early days or if these are elements that have been picked up in various revisions of the comics over the years, is not something I am qualified to make a good guess at.

So, for example, the origin includes the theft of Queen Hypolyta’s girdle by Hercules who then enslaves all the amazons. When Aphrodite eventually sets them free and hides them on Paradise Island, they all still have to wear shackles/bracelets as a reminder of the nature of man (this is pretty good, feminist stuff for the early 1940s I reckon... at least it’s probably quite ahead of its time in terms of seeing publication in a popular print form for the period). Also, when Wonder Woman, aka Princess Diana, aka Diana Prince (her alter ego as a simultaneous Army Nurse and Secretary to Steve Trevor’s superior in the army) has shackles attached to those specific bracelets and they are put on by a man, she basically loses her powers until they are removed (this was one of the few equivalents to Superman's Kryptonite the character had at this stage).

However, the little things which did make their way into the film in one shape or form are clearly visible here. For instance, in one issue we have the villain as Dr. Poison, who is revealed at the end of the strip to be a woman (the character was played by Elena Anaya in the movie). Also, although the World War Two setting was relocated to World War One for the movie, the second Wonder Woman strip (the first to feature in Sensation Comics) also includes a storyline involving the villain's perfection of a new kind of gas that penetrates all known gas masks... another element from the recent motion picture.

There are also many things which wouldn’t have translated too well from page to screen, for sure. For instance, the fetishistic overtones of female domination and lezdom spanking, often seen in relation to Diana’s friend Etta Candy, was mostly edited from the movie. Etta herself was a completely different personality in the movie but they did get her trademark cry of “Woo! Woo!” into the film... albeit very subtly. Perhaps another thing that may have been a big mistep if the film version had gone into a more faithful adaptation, especially in the scenes on Themyscira where the Amazons are fighting the Germans, would be the fact that, rather than ride around on horses, the Amazons of Paradise Island tend to ride around on giant kangaroos. That's an idea possibly best left in the 1940s as regards to movie credibility, methinks.

There are also some subtle differences too.

Yes, Professor Marston was, along with his wife and live in mistress to them both, the real life inventor of the lie detector... and he does have a lie detector appearing in more than one issue in this first year. However, rather than being a specific ‘rope of truth’ as it came to be over the years, the golden lariat was actually a piece of equipment that compelled the wearer to do whatever the wielder commanded... unless the person giving the orders was a man, of course.

Due to the setting and the times, the comic has a lot of contemporaneous references and also, like many of the comics of the time (especially the early Superman strips, if memory serves), a lot of social messages about how the young readers should be living their lives in the face of corruption and, of course, the war. So, you will sometimes get stories devoted to fairer wages for the shop assistants in department stores or factories keeping the price of milk down for the people. And, naturally, the usual stuff about buying lots of War Bonds and helping the war effort. There are also referrals to things which, while not quite yet lost to the period in which they were written, were things I had to look up. Ignatz Mouse and Krazy Kat, for example, rang a vague bell but I had to research them before I was any the wiser.

That being said, one of the most problematic things with these early comics is the war itself. Since the character, like many of her costumed contemporaries, is all powerful, you wonder why she doesn’t just go over to Germany and deal with Hitler herself and end things in a few minutes. I don’t know exactly when DC wrote in the mystic powers of the infamous and, possibly, real life Spear Of Destiny into the strip, to keep superheroes from getting near Hitler but... it doesn’t seem to be much in evidence in these stories for sure.

One of the delights of these comics is the advancement of the form itself. Things in the artwork are evolving such as one page splash panels to start off the story or using bubble edges around panels which are flashbacks. It’s nice to see this evolution of the art of the comic strip although, it has to be said, when they flash back to her origin story (and change it slightly), you have the former versions of the story on hand so you can see how the colours have been changed on later versions of the back story. Deliberate ‘errors’ like this certainly keeps the readers on their toes and it makes things interesting. It’s also astonishing to see how far ahead of her time, in some ways, Diana was in the comics. Not just in terms of feminism but with fantasy ideas too. For example, she was having adventures on other worlds as the astral projection of her form two decades before Marvel’s Doctor Strange character was doing this more regularly. My guess would be that this was very much influenced by the ethereal transportation of John Carter to the planet of Barsoom (Mars) in the Martian tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs (alas, the film version of A Princess of Mars, called just John Carter, changed it to teleportation to make the concept more palatable to modern audiences). I’m sure they’re something Marston would have at least been a little familiar with, at any rate.

So that’s the first year of Wonder Woman read and I have to say, I really enjoyed these things... especially when you know a little of Marston’s history and kinks and see how they made their way into the strip in some subtle and, often, not so subtle ways. These reprint books from DC are really appreciated and much cheaper than the old DC Archives hardbacks from a number of decades ago. They bundle the appearances together chronologically from all the simultaneous titles, rather than just reprint the one title and leave you with references to other stories you’ve not read yet.. I’m definitely going to have to catch up with some more of these Wonder Woman reprints... and probably some of their other characters as well. I’ve already picked up the first volume of Batman and I’ll hopefully be able to get to that one sometime soon.

Doctor Who - The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos

Ux Dodgers

Doctor Who - The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
Airdate: 9th December 2018
BBC 1

Hooray... we actually had a finale to the series which wasn’t half bad.

After a prologue where we see an alien race (a race which consists of only two people) called the Ux witness a person transported into their midst, we jump thousands of years in the future to find The Doctor (as played by the excellent Jodie Whittaker) and her three companions Graham, Yas and Ryan (played by Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gil and Tosin Cole) answering a distress signal from the same planet. The planet has unusual properties which attack and break down a person’s grasp of reality so The Doctor fits them all with neural inhibitors and they go to the rescue of the latest in a crew of people who have fallen victim to the floating building at the centre of the planet and its sinister inhabitants.

Now, it has to be said, when we got to the point in this story when the main villain from the first episode was obviously supposed to be someone I should remember... well, I’m sorry but I didn’t. I did figure he would be back at some point but new show runner Chibnall said there would be no multi-part story arcs this series so I kinda assumed they were saving it until next year. So I was a little surprised when the four main protagonist twigged just who the villain was way before I’d cottoned on. When I saw that it was, indeed, the rubbishy looking villain from the first episode... well... my heart sank a little.

However, it turns out it was a nicely staged, compelling episode and somehow the director even, for the most part, managed to successfully distract me from the somewhat cheap looking sets.

There was also a nice dramatic edge to the episode set up where Graham takes The Doctor to one side and makes it clear that when he catches up to this alien who took the life of his wife, he would definitely kill him... despite The Doctor’s warning that if he killed anyone he could no longer travel with her. And, I have to say, Bradley Walsh carried out the various scenes where he really made you think he was going to put down said alien villain with such expertise that it was an absolute pleasure to watch. It gave the episode a certain dramatic weight which would have been sadly lacking, I suspect, if a personal element had not been added into the mix with one of the regular characters.

So, yeah, some of the props and effects did look like they were conjured up from leftover packaging left over from Marks And Spencer but when you have a dramatic tension created by the characters like this... well... appreciation of the quality of the special effects goes out the window, to be honest.

It was also nice, if just a little corny, to have The Doctor give one of those little speeches to the various supporting characters before leaving in the TARDIS which was another of those dialogues towards living in hope. It kind of reminded me of Hartnell’s Doctor leaving Susan Foreman in The Dalek Invasion Of Earth (reviewed here) speech a little bit. I don’t know if that was the vibe the writer was going for with this but that was the way it came across to me, at any rate.

So, yeah, yet another short review on this one (my apologies) as I don’t really have that much else to say about The Battle Of Ranskoor Av Kolos... but this time because I don’t have any really negative take aways from this specific episode, I'm happy to say. It was nicely paced, brilliantly acted by all who sailed in her and not badly written, either. Some fairly nice music too which I believe is being released on CD by Silva Screen in the new year so... you know... looking forward to that (although, note to Silva Screen... can we please have Murray Gold’s music from Series 10 before you release that one please?). And, you know, there was honestly not a dull moment in this one (which is good because there have been plenty of dull moments in some of the previous episodes this year.

Quietly looking forward to the New Year’s Day special now which, if the teaser is anything to go by, features the most terrifying, evil creature in the universe dormant and buried in the Earth for gazillions of years. If it’s not the Daleks then I may get a little annoyed but we shall see. Expect the review of that one to go up in early January.... in the meantime lots of reviews and the annual Christmas cryptic movie quiz to go up here so, hopefully you’ll give this blog another read before then. All the best.

Creed II (aka Rocky VIII)

Here Be Dragos

Creed II (aka Rocky VIII)
2018 USA Directed by Steven Caple Jr.
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Okay, this one has spoilers in it.

So now we have Creed II which, if you’ve seen the other movies, you’ll know is actually Rocky VIII and this one follows on directly from Creed (reviewed by me here) a few years down the line. Now, I wouldn’t say that this is nearly as entertaining as the previous one in the series... and it really should have been given the plot set up on this one... but it’s nowhere near the worst in the series either and I was pretty okay with this. Plus, it has to be said, there’s one really mind blowing moment of audio/visual design which had me almost leaping out of my chair and applauding at one point (I’ll get to that soon enough).

Okay, so once again we have Michael B. Jordan playing Adonis Creed, the son of the late Apollo Creed who got clobbered and killed in the ring by Ivan Drago, played by Dolph Lungren in Rocky IV, which kind of kick started Lungren’s acting career. In this film, Ivan Drago returns with his son Viktor Drago (played by Florian 'Big Nasty' Munteanu) and the young Drago challenges Creed to a match to defend his newly won title as champion of the world. Adonis takes the match, much against the advice of Rocky, who refuses to try and train him for what he obviously sees as a fight Creed cannot win. Of course, this comes to pass and young Creed is heavily damaged in the ring in the fight, although he retains his title on a technicality as Drago is disqualified because he hit Creed as he was on his way down to the canvass (I think... some boxing thing, anyway).

So yep, you guessed it, we have the drama of a recovering Creed who has to maintain his relationship with his girlfriend Bianca (played again by Tessa Thompson) who is expecting their first child and he and Rocky Balboa (played brilliantly, as usual, by Sylvester Stallone) have to sort things out so Rocky can train him up properly for the re-match. We also have appearances from Phylicia Rashad  as Apollo Creed’s wife Mary Ann plus... and I really wasn’t expecting this... the still stunning Brigitte Nielsen as Ivan Drago’s ex-wife Ludmilla.

And, yes, it’s more or less a direct sequel to, in some ways and, pretty much a remake, sort of, of Rocky IV. And it’s an okay addition to the Rocky movies. Although, it has to be said, Viktor Drago is so big that I don’t, for a minute, think that Creed could have come close to beating him in real life (although that may be because I don’t know anything about the sport).

Both Jordan and Stallone get an equal share of the screen time but I would say Stallone actually comes off a lot better in this one. The films have never really been about boxing (not a sport I really have an affinity for) and they really just use that genre arena to explore the characters and I would say that Adonis Creed doesn’t seem to have come very far as a well rounded human being in terms of progression from the previous film. Whereas Rocky, like he always seems to, little by little, is just a bit more smarter again than the previous installment. He’s now a very shrewd man, in some ways, although he tends to back away from showing that with a lot of self deprecating talk, it seems to me.

The film does seem a little bit ‘by the numbers’ and, unlike previous Rocky films, this one still hasn’t been as brave as some of the previous installments where, in at least one as I recall, Rocky actually loses the final fight. Here, even though Creed is beaten to a pulp midway through the film, he still retains his title on a technicality... and I wish the writing here had been a little different. That being said there were some nice things about it... and fan pleasing references to most (if not all) of the previous seven movies in terms of dialogue call backs and such. It was certainly an entertaining piece that really doesn’t do any damage to the memory of the others in the series.

One of those nice things is the tradition of talking to the dead, which seems to have somehow been handed down from Rocky to Creed. Like in the movie Rocky Balboa (and possibly Creed), we have a sequence where Rocky spends time talking to the tombstone of his deceased wife Adrian and, at the end of this movie, we have a scene (cross cut with Rocky visiting his long estranged son) where Adonis visits the grave of his father and introduces him to Bianca and their daughter. So that’s kind of nice and I wonder if this will be something featured in later chapters of the series (Stallone has recently said Rocky won’t be seen again in any future sequels).

Another nice thing is the musical score, which is a bit hit and miss and features some awful songs but also has some of Bill Conti’s themes from the original Rocky films woven into the fabric of the music, with a really nicely timed appearance of the Rocky fanfare at pivotal moment in the final fight which has been smartly held back until this moment.

And then there’s the absolutely brilliant thing which has been haunting me since I saw it...

There’s a moment in the film where two scenes featuring different characters in completely different locations are crosscut and suddenly, the audience is kinda treated almost as a character in the narrative, if you think carefully about it. What happens is Bianca and Mary Ann Creed are talking about Adonis and Bianca is explaining how he has become more distant since the whole thing with Viktor Drago kicked off. Meanwhile, this is cross cut with Adonis training (or doing physiotherapy possibly, I can’t quite remember which stage of the film this is at) and he is seen swimming in the pool and we have some of the ambient noise from that scene but, at the same time, we are still hearing the voices of the two actresses talking in the scene we keep being cross-cut back to. Now this is the thing... as Adonis’ head goes below the surface of the water, the voices of the actresses become blurry like we’re listening to them from under the water. When his head breaks the surface they become full bodied voices again and then, when he goes under again, they get distorted by the water. Now this is amazing because we know that Adonis Creed can’t possibly hear what these two ladies are saying about him in another part of the town so... think about it... this is a case of the audience via the camera going under water and hearing the cross cut scene being distorted through the water we’ve presumably got in our ears. And, even though it probably should pop you out the movie (well okay, it did me but only because it was such a brilliant artistic decision) it works really well and I suspect that 99% of the audience doesn’t even register it on a conscious level. But I raise my hat to the film makers because this was just amazing.

And that’s me done with Adonis Creed for however long it takes them to bring out another sequel. People who like the Rocky films in general should like this as it’s another, mostly, entertaining chapter in the Rocky saga and doesn’t let any of the other films down (unlike Rocky V perhaps). It runs over two hours but I didn’t notice the time and, if anything, it seemed a little rushed in some sequences. Looking forward to the next one but... I really hope Stallone changes his mind and comes on board, even if it’s just so we can see his character die on screen and have some kind of closure to Rocky’s life. That would be a nice thing.

The Blood Island Collection

Sangre-La

The Blood Island Collection
Severin Films Blu Ray Zone A
Comprising Terror Is A Man, Brides Of Blood,
Mad Doctor Of Blood Island and Beast Of Blood

Well, I have to admit I’d never heard of the Blood Island movies until Severin released this very limited boxed edition with restored prints and transfers. However, the fact that a series of films have been made all set on the titular location and, in the case of two of the films, sharing a character or two while featuring unbelievably silly monsters mixed with brief snatches of nudity, all of which were totally unknown for me... proved too much for my curiosity. When I saw that the third movie also included a soundtrack CD of the film which you couldn’t get anywhere else, well... that was the clincher. So, I found someone in the UK who was able to import it without having to shilly shally around with those completely ridiculous US/UK postage rates and got access to these things... well, relatively inexpensively.

To be honest, judging from the trailers I’d seen, I was expecting sheer stupidity and ‘so bad it’s good’ awfulness... the kind that gives you a warm, comfortable feeling in your tummy... but, as it turns out, I was in for a bit of a surprise when I put the first disc on...


Terror Is A Man
1959 Philippines/USA
Directed by Gerardo de Leon and Eddie Romero

Okay, so Terror Is A Man is made almost ten years before the sequel (and I use the term sequel loosely here... I’ll reveal why later on) and it’s the only one shot in black and white. It started off absolutely up to my expectations for the first ten seconds or so by running a card before the movie which read thusly...

Warning
The picture you are about to see has a scene so shocking that it is necessary to forewarn you. We suggest that the squeamish and faint-hearted close their eyes at the sound of the bell and reopen them when the bell rings again.
The Management.

I love good showmanship and the silliness of this hoopla quickly brought a smile to my face. After this, the film starts off with a shot of a map showing the Isla De Sangre in relation to everywhere else and, as far as I can tell, this is the only time this map is seen throughout the four films. This is followed by a shot of a boat carrying an unconscious man pulling up to Blood Island. The guy is called William Fitzgerald, as played by Richard Derr. He is rescued by a small party of scientists on the island, including Dr. Charles Girard (played by Francis Lederer) and his wife Frances (played by Greta Thyssen) who seems to dominate the screen with prominent bosoms that threaten to pop out and endanger the rest of the cast at any moment. Indeed, when she goes to bed, she kind of sets a trend for all Blood Island women in future films... by kinda frolicking and moving in a bizarrely sexual way that suggests masturbation, even when she’s literally just trying to get to sleep. I don’t know who taught her how to do this but I must learn this trick some time.

This film is surprising in that it’s not only quite entertaining, in a story that finds Fitzgerald observing and helping out the doctor who has been operating on a panther and slowly turning it into a beast man over the years, but also quite well put together and realised a little more subtly than I was expecting. It’s quite obviously a remake/sideways adaptation of H. G. Wells’ classic novel The Island Of Dr. Moreau but I have to say, it’s actually pretty good and, easily, the best of the movies in this set. If this had been made just ten years earlier during the classic Hollywood era of films like the Universal Monsters movies and Val Lewton’s productions then this may still be celebrated as a classic to this day. It’s moody and interestingly lit and doesn’t look out of place among those other films I just mentioned.

Although sometimes it’s a little too well lit, it has to be said. There are a fair few ‘night for day’ shots which really do show up in the worst way.

That being said, musically the film is well ‘spotted’ in that it’s not wall to wall and scenes which don’t really require music are not over cooked. There’s also some skillful camera work here with some oddities such as a POV from the monster’s perspective suddenly transforming into a third person view when the creature pounces. I could, however, have done without the terrible dummy somebody suddenly transforms into when he is thrown over a cliff and ditto that bell when it finally rings to warn the audience at what is, literally, a one or two second shot of a scalpel bloodlessy attacking tissue during an operation. However, this is not a bad movie and I was surprised by the quality of this one.


Brides of Blood
1968 Philippines/USA
Directed by Gerardo de Leon and Eddie Romero

Okay, nine years later we have a ‘sequel’, Brides of Blood, which is not really promoted as such and, indeed, never once refers to the previous movie. This one proves to be a totally unsubtle experience and absolutely what I was expecting from these movies, to be honest. And that’s not a bad thing either.

Opening with a small group of scientists on a ship en route to Blood Island, we have a fairly unsympathetic leading lady (one of two female protagonists) who is shunned by her husband, the main scientist, and engages in an activity on the boat going from non-consensual rape to fully consensual sexual activity in that strange way that only old movies seem to be able to pull off as something even approaching plausibility or acceptability.

This film includes some nicely gory moments as, for instance, the local natives are taking dismembered bodies away to be thrown into the sea... somebody drops a quite realistic looking leg. When the scientists arrive to study the effects of ‘atomic bomb tests’ near the island from years earlier, they become the guests of another ‘Western’ man in his mansion on the island. Of course, atomic radiation means the writers can get away with almost anything in this film and asides from the gratuitous ripping away of young, sacrificial maidens' bikini tops at regular intervals throughout the film, we have a forest consisting of deadly, groping tentacle trees, the marvellously ridiculous looking monster whom the said young maidens are being sacrificed to and a terrible looking butterfly which bites one of the scientists, even though you can clearly see the wires on it as it flaps about the set in a supposedly deadly fashion.

We also have some scenes of midget whipping and a sexed up lady who must have studied at the same school of seduction that the lead actress in the first film did, as she sexily fondles the vertical pole of her four poster bed. And, alas, some more terrible ‘day for night’ shots in the film and, much worse, the impression that characters are wandering from one place to another at different times of day as they go somewhere and five minutes later it’s night and then day again and then back to night, as the cameraman presumably forgets to put his filter on during some sequences. Time certainly flies on this island, that’s for sure.

The film is silly, terribly made fun and finishes with a native dance ritual which, in terms of enthusiasm and length, is not unlike the one seen near the beginning of Caltiki, The Immortal Monster (reviewed here). This is an interesting ritual in which lady dancers attempt to attract a mate and then take them back into the forest to a place which I can only assume is an area called The Snogging Trees.


Mad Doctor of Blood Island
1968 Philippines/USA
Directed by Gerardo de Leon and Eddie Romero

Next we have another sequel, Mad Doctor of Blood Island, which in no way refers to the prior film in that it takes place the very next year in the same location but has an entirely different set of natives and absolutely no stories about the scientists who were staying there the year before.

In another burst of showmanship, audience members are invited to drink a vile looking green liquid and recite the ‘green blood oath’ before the opening credits so they come to no harm during the film.
Also before the credits we see a naked lady being chased by a blood island monster and, whenever it’s in the vicinity, the audience does indeed get harmed by some awfully rapid zooms in and out of random frames. And, unfortunately, this is the modus operandi of the cameraman throughout the majority of the movie... this one really made me dizzy, it has to be said.

Once the credits are done, we once again have a vessel containing strangers to the place approaching the island. This film is all about Dr. Bill Foster (played by John Ashley), Shelia Willard (played by Angelique Pettyjohn) and their acquaintances as they try and thwart the scientific curiosity of the titular ‘mad doctor’, who is once more involved with unleashing beasts on the island. In his lab he even has some of the ‘moving forest’ in what is pretty much the only echo of the former film.... although there is also another ritualistic dancing scene that could almost have been lifted from Brides Of Bloood, including ritualistic snogging, once more.

This film is... well it’s not very good and even the fear of radio signals which the creature in this one seems to demonstrate as some kind of sonically allergic reaction appears to have no real function in the final narrative. I was glad when the ‘mad doctor’ was finally burned to death in his scientific compound, to be honest. And that brings us nicely into...


Beast Of Blood
1970 Philippines/USA
Directed by Eddie Romero

The fourth film starts off with the boat carrying Dr. Foster and co away from the island in the previous movie. Yes that’s right... this is the only one of the Blood Island movies which is actually up front about being some kind of sequel to the prior movie. On the boat, a random creature who stowed away at the end of the previous adventure... and I’ve still no idea where this monster at the end of the last movie came from, by the way... attacks the crew and passengers leaving Dr. Foster, again played by John Ashley, the sole survivor. When he goes back to the island a number of months later, he has a troublesome reporter in tow by the name of Myra J. Russell, played here by Celeste Yarnall.

With some friends and acquaintances, they go on a boring but deadly chase across the island to find the location of the mad scientist from the former film, who turns out to have not burned to death after all. Indeed, the experience seems to do wonders for his health. For instance, he has a beard, some terrible scarring down half his face and an eye patch but, miraculously, he also seems to be a lot thinner and a much different age from the scientist we saw previously. I guess that the actor bearing no resemblance to the previous guy playing the role can only be a good thing then.

Although this is the least interesting or fun film in the series, it does have its moments. For instance, when Dr, Foster and a group of people are exploring the previous ‘Mad Doctor’s Lair’, things look mighty dangerous and possibly booby trapped, so he tells everyone to “Stay close”. This is apparently a call to arms for Celeste Yarnall to back away from the group completely, get as far away from them as she possibly can without even trying... and then spring a trap door. This woman has no common sense. There’s also a nice moment when the mad scientist is talking to a severed monster head he is keeping alive in a dish while he operates on its body, when he tells him, “Believe me, I know how difficult this must be for you.”

All in all, though, Beast Of Blood is the least watchable of the series, which has lots of long cat and mouse sequences where various parties are stalking each other through the forest... which makes it all seem a little like an extended 1970s Tarzan or Planet Of The Apes TV episode for a while. Just not very fun.

That being said, the whole bunch of prints from Severin are amazingly restored here (yeah, these look like they were only shot the other week) and have various extras accompanying these excellent transfers. I’m really glad that I bit the bullet on this one and picked it up because the first two movies, at least, have some replay value and I’ll probably end up rewatching all of these at some point. I haven’t listened to the soundtrack yet but The Blood Island Collection is a truly nicely put together package of some films which might have died a death had not Severin stepped in to restore them. I guess it must have paid out for them too since the box was a total sell out. Much as I hate this new business model everyone seems to be latching onto at the moment... where everything is a limited edition so you’d better get one quick... I have to say that this one was definitely worth the price of admission. Give this one a watch if you get the opportunity.

Doctor Who - It Takes You Away

Norway Out

Doctor Who - It Takes You Away
Airdate: 2nd December 2018
BBC 1

Well this... was better than last week’s show at any rate.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say that this week’s episode, It Takes You Away, was pretty good, classic Doctor Who storytelling in some ways. Admittedly it looked a little cheap at some points and, excuse me but those flesh eating moths might just as well have been imported from the B-movie Brides Of Blood (review coming very soon) in that they looked completely ludicrous, unthreatening and, basically, couldn’t have looked much worse if you could have seen little threads of cotton holding them up.

So this week’s show had The Doctor, Graham, Yas and Ryan pitching up in a forest region in Norway of 2018. They find an almost deserted cottage with a blind girl barricaded in it, who has lost her father to... ‘a thing’. So it’s up to our regular crew... played as marvellously as ever by Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill and Tosin Cole... to get a shift on and find out what has taken the girl’s father and why. Of course, since this is one of the better Doctor Who stories this season, at least in terms of plotting, there’s also a little twist involving a copycat world through a portal between a kind of airlock/bubble filled with deadly moths and an alien whose soul purpose, it seems to me, is to fill in bits of the plot to let The Doctor, and the audience, know just what’s going on. Maybe he came from the legendary planet of Exposition.

In terms of pacing it has to be said that, while the episode was interesting in terms of dialogue, it felt a little light on action but it more than made up for it in terms of giving us a kind of enchanted... or maybe I should say disenchanted... frog creature and also yet another appearance from Graham’s dead wife. Yeah, I knew they hadn’t finished yanking on that string just yet and I suspect we’ve not seen the last of her in the shows to come.

So... performances were all good and this included a stand up series of moments of Graham having to come to terms with the fact that his dead wife is not real and having to choose to reject her to keep himself... and everyone else as it happens... safe. Bradley Walsh shows just why he’s the right choice for a show like this here although, honestly, I’d really like to see an episode where it’s just him and The Doctor talking about the things which went down in that first story. It would also make sense for The Doctor to address this elephant in the room much more than she did here... although what she did in this one certainly made for a good start.

There were some nice lighting effects in the protective bubble which manifested as a cave/buffer between the worlds but ultimately, yeah... it just looked like a cheap set so I wasn’t so impressed with the execution this week. However, the revelation of the beast which the blind girl’s daughter is trying to hide from was a nice little reveal I didn’t see coming and it wasn’t an over cooked moment either. A throwaway reveal can sometimes be a lot more powerful than something which is built up constantly throughout a show and I think this one was handled with just the right lack of gravitas, to be honest. That being said... there was absolutely no follow through logic to the reveal which kinda made it completely redundant and questionable, to tell the truth.

There was also a nice, classic moment when Yas came up with the idea of ‘reversing the polarity’, which obvsiously had it’s origins in Jon Pertwee’s incarnation of The Doctor before being carried through as almost an unofficial, conservatively used catch phrase over the years and The Doctor’s response to Yas 'talking her kind of language' was a special moment.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about this one and here I am again at the end of another very short Doctor Who review in a year of episodes which has pretty much been inspiring nothing but short reviews. So I’m sorry for not having much else to talk about here but... there’s not a heck of a lot of substance to these latest shows, I guess. I think the problem is possibly we have a very good incarnation of The Doctor, right off the bat, with stories and ideas which aren’t really up to the strength of her personality. I think it might have been a bit of a mistake to not use any of the character's old foes in this series as some of those would have brought some considerably weighty baggage with them which may just up the stakes when the story needs a lift. I’m hoping next year’s series doesn’t take the same path as the current one. So, yeah, short review for, frankly, a very short series. Next week’s show is already the last episode and I feel like things have been deliberately truncated even more so than the previous ten years of shorter seasons. Let’s hope that, next week, they really go out with a bang.

The Possession Of Hannah Grace

Saving Grace

The Possession Of Hannah Grace
2018 USA Directed by Diederik Van Rooijen
UK cinema release print.

Well this is an entertaining little horror movie I saw the other night, based solely on the strength of the trailer I saw about a month before.

Now, it has to be said, the promotional trailer for The Possession of Hannah Grace is cut so that it seems to be a lot more subtle and atmospheric than it actually is... at least in terms of a slow burn film, that is. This one is anything but restrained and even during the opening pre-credits sequence we are treated to an ‘exorcism gone wrong’ with all the kinds of post-Freidkin possession shenanigans you’d expect to see in something like this, thrown at you in the first five minutes or so. It’s quite hokey, in all honesty but that’s okay, there are many kinds of horror films and this is just not one based on any sense of deepening mystery, is all.

The story is the tale of Megan Reed, played ably by Shay Mitchell. An ex-cop who is cursed with the cliché of failing her partner by not using immediate, deadly force and who has left the service because she can’t cope with the hesitancy that killed her colleague. And, yeah, if you think this back story is just setting her up for a shot at redemption and recompense towards the end of the movie... bingo. Like I said, not subtle but that’s okay, it’s a fun enough ride.

So anyway, shortly after we join Megan, she starts the first night of her solitary graveyard shift at the Boston hospital and, of course, as you would expect, the body of the victim of the exorcism gone wrong, Hannah Grace (played quite dextrously by Kirby Johnson), is brought in and starts causing all kinds of trouble for poor Megan, as it’s clear the exorcism didn’t quite take. And... yes, if you’re thinking this sounds a touch like The Autopsy Of Jane Doe (which I reviewed here) then you’d be absolutely right. This is a little like that film but with no slow build up or mystery and lots of demonic battles pushed to the fore. I mean, all pretense at mystery on this one is taken away at the end of the first pre-credits sequence anyway, when it’s made clear to the audience that Hannah Grace... or at least the cadaver of her which is inhabited by a demon of some kind... is not exactly dead.

Now, the film tries to have its cake and eat it by showing us Megan working alone in a dark suite of the hospital morgue while, at the same time, having her connect with, or sometimes meet and make, new friends and acquaintances over the evening. The reason why the story does this is very simple... the somewhat less than static corpse of the title character is slowly healing herself and, basically, the more people she kills, the less crippled, burned and wounded she is. So we get a steady stream of potential victims visiting Megan for various reasons over the course of the evening, specifically so they can be stealthily killed by Hannah in some kind of supernatural way. Which kind of works okay and I didn’t mind this way of doing things here... once I’d figured out the director was going for full-on demonic showdowns rather than trying to build a scary atmosphere. It’s a valid way of going about things and it... just about... works here.

There’s also a nice sense of symmetry in the mise en scene to this movie and, by that, what I mean is that this director seems to really love the middle of the screen. I would guess that for over 90% of this movie, the camera favours shots which pitch the main action or focus of the shot dead centre. It’s almost like Van Rooijen and his cinematographer have an obsession with this way of doing things. Sometimes he will just use the vertical slabs made by corridors, doors and windows to pull everything to the middle and often he will be moving his camera around, sometimes hand held, so that whoever the character he is following will still mostly stay at the centre of the frame. Occasionally, he will use the twisted, fast, creepy crawling cadaver of Hannah Grace and deliberately pitch her off centre in order to contrast this style and attempt to surprise the audience but, even some of the jump scares are pitched directly centre of the shot and are done by masking off visibility with fluctuating light and shadow rather than with peripheral details.

Strangely, there’s an obvious set up early in the film and he never seems to yank on that string later... at least not in this cut of the movie. Very early on the filmmakers go out of their way to make us understand that about 90% of the lights in the morgue are sensor operated on movement to save energy and this is further highlighted by constant scenes of Megan having to go into dark areas and wave her arms about so the lights come back on. So, yeah, I was just waiting for this to be used as some kind of set up to some big kind of jump scare but... no, surprisingly the director doesn’t really utilise this here. That being said, there could well have been a scene which did just that in an earlier cut, for all I know. I’m just guessing here though because, why shoot all those instances as a set up unless you were going to take advantage of it later on in the movie? Unless he just wanted an excuse to keep everything darkly lit, I suppose.

At the end of the day, The Possession of Hannah Grace has some nice acting, some likeable characters and also, I should add, a nice soundtrack by composer John Frizzel which, alas, doesn’t seem to have a CD release. The downside on this is it’s fairly predictable and there are no real scary bits in this one. However, as a ‘comfort horror’ film is works quite well and I think most lovers of the genre will quite like this one. Or at least not find much to complain about. So there you go, that’s me done on this one. If horror movies, no matter how hokey, are your thing, then you might want to give this one a go. If not... yeah, you can probably miss this one. I quite liked it and will be happy to watch it again when the Blu Ray goes into the bargain bins, for sure.